


The River of Your Wrist

by MargaretKire



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Pining, Protectiveness, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 03:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10428408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MargaretKire/pseuds/MargaretKire
Summary: Yoseph has worked hard to maintain his image, believing that no one would respect him if they knew of his softer feelings for a male heroin addict in his employ.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic based off two characters with a total of about three minutes of screen time from the intro of Iron Fist episode 5, Under Leaf Pluck Lotus.
> 
> It happened because of the junkie's decaying beauty, and the way the gangster threatens Sophia saying, "If you damaged him-" He was more worried about the junkie being hurt than losing the partnership of a lifetime. If you ask me, there is a story there.
> 
> Here is a picture of these two, so you know what they look like. [Yoseph and Grant](https://mothdustmouth.tumblr.com/post/158784401840/the-river-of-your-wrist-margaretkire-iron-fist)

Yoseph winked at the attractive woman seated before him, feeding into the stereotype of a sleazy drug lord that he’d worked so hard to cultivate. It was a role he slipped into by default anytime anyone else was around, especially potential business partners. It was why there was a half-eaten order of food on the small desk, why he had a cheap can of beer at his fingertips. No one seemed to notice that he never took a sip. It was enough for it just to be there, coalescing him into the Russian gangster he needed people to see. He didn’t matter. Who he was didn’t mean anything, not here. Not when he was the boss.

Sophia was no different. He had caught the quick transfer of her thick gold ring from her wedding finger to her middle one, proving to Yoseph that she was planning on winning this sale as much through seduction as the premium heroin she claimed was in her possession. He saw no harm in letting her think she was doing a good job. So he feigned interest as she flashed her assets at him. All part of the song and dance.

He motioned for one of his bodyguards to go get their heroin expert, waiting a floor down in the gutted office high rise. Soon the bodyguard was back, walking quickly, his huge arms swinging at his sides. In contrast, shambling behind him down the long stretch of gray carpet came Grant. Yoseph felt a pressure in his ribs, his lungs constricting at the sight of the tall man. 

It had been a long time since Yoseph had seen him in natural light. In fact, he doubted very much that Grant would normally even be awake at this hour, as he was usually up late into the morning, working the club scene. But that was Yoseph’s fault, wasn’t it?

Yoseph had been the one to come up with the idea: get a real junkie into their pocket, one with enough brains to be half spy, half tester. They would already be in the scene, already know the bouncers and the dealers and the whores. No one would be overly cautious about keeping secrets around a strung-out junkie.

The first time Yoseph had laid eyes on Grant, he knew. Their gang was scoping out a new club, as quietly as possible. Yoseph believed in going in soft, getting the lay of the land. He’d seen too many bosses topple their own empire by being hasty, by pushing in and showing off rather than lying in wait and using their heads. One benefit of being a small man was knowing that you didn’t have to be the biggest and the loudest to win a fight. You just had to be the smartest.

So when Yoseph saw the gangly young man wandering through the crowd, his vulnerability on display even while his intelligent eyes cataloged everything around him, he knew they’d found their man. He was appealing enough, physically, to be used as bait for either gender, while having that air of delicate decay that only comes from a lifetime of using. He was the real thing.

Seeing him this early in the day, every angle and track mark lit up by the white light pouring in the huge office windows, Yoseph felt genuinely shocked by Grant’s appearance. They’d had him with them for just over a year, and in that time, he’d more than earned his keep. Yoseph had sent Grant in as a buyer to new prospects, or as a scene kid to new clubs. The junkie always managed to bring back some bit of information that the rest of Yoseph’s team had been unable to obtain. Yoseph had saved hundreds of thousands by avoiding bad deals - and discovering good ones - through Grant’s intel.

He had found himself tempted to buy the kid things as thank you presents, though he knew how that would look to the others. So instead of getting him nice clothes or feeding him decent meals like he wanted, he gave Grant and the others bonuses in cash. Yoseph had no delusions of where that cash was going, and those months of increased use were beginning to take their toll. 

Grant had been thin before, but now he looked emaciated. His cheekbones were sharp and high over his sunken face, his eye sockets were hollow and dark. He still retained a sort of unearthly beauty, though it looked on the brink of being lost- swallowed up by the drug. His large eyes were nervous, darting to Yoseph as he sat in the chair across the desk, his body on edge and needing a fix. 

Yoseph tried not to show any emotion as he looked at the wrecked human being in front of him. He reminded himself that this transaction was all about the heroin. It was about a potentially life-changing partnership with Sophia’s boss. He would play his part, and if everything ran smoothly, they would be millions richer by the end of the year. Then, maybe, they could look into rehabilitating Grant. After all - he would argue when the time came - he was no good to them dead.

He tried not to flinch when Sophia called Grant “honey,” pityingly, before applying the drug patch over the mess of purple marks littering his thin arm. She was practically purring over him as she leaned forward to pull the paper edge off the clear patch. Yoseph clenched his jaw and said nothing. This was about the drug. It was just a sale’s pitch.

Grant’s eyes caught his, still so wide and innocent looking, even as his body was aging and crumbling rapidly all around him. “This is ridiculous,” Grant said, breaking eye contact with Yoseph and looking up at Sophia. She smiled at him like a cat eyeing a canary. She finished peeling the paper away and then rested her hand, almost tenderly, on the skeletal arm over the patch, activating it before stepping back.

The sunken gray eyes flashed up to hers as she moved, looking oddly hopeful. For a long, stretched-out moment nothing happened. Yoseph caught himself fidgeting with a glass vial of sample heroin, worrying it in his fingers as he gazed watchfully at his drug expert. After another moment, Yoseph looked pointedly at Sophia, but she still had her attention focused solely on the junkie.

His attention was pulled back to Grant when the young man made a choking sound, his eyes shutting and his head falling back. Yoseph did his best not to flinch as Grant flailed and fell backwards, taking the office chair with him as he sprawled like a colt on the ground, surrounded by scraps of tubing and wiring that had been gutted from the ceiling. He lay in a nest of plastic intestines, gagging and seizing. 

Yoseph’s feet flinched under his chair, but he waited for one of his bodyguards to approach first. The large man knelt down and reached out to the skinny, spasming body amidst the coils of tubing, as Yoseph willed himself to be calm. 

They had almost lost Grant once before, back when he first joined. He had been working by himself in a new area of town and had gotten in over his head with a club owner. He’d been intentionally overdosed by one of the girls at the club, acting on orders from higher up. Thankfully, Grant’s insanely high tolerance had bought him enough time for Yoseph’s people to get him to their unofficial medic and dose him with adrenaline, saving his life. 

Since that incident, not only had Yoseph made sure that Grant always had a plainclothes bodyguard working the same club as him, but also required them to carry an emergency dose of adrenaline with them at all times. 

The man who knelt next to Grant now had a syringe ready in his pocket, just waiting for the boss’ word to use it. Yoseph made himself wait. He made himself seem as bored as he could manage.

“What the hell is this?” he asked Sophia, gesturing to the writhing form on the ground. The huge bodyguard leaned over Grant, slapping his face, trying to revive him. Yoseph felt the prickling heat of panic begin to wash over him. What if this was the end of the road for Grant? What if there never was a rehabilitation, no return to health? What if Yoseph never got to see those eyes, clear and un-bloodshot, looking at him in the clear light of day? “If you broke him-”

“My mom always told me patience is a virtue,” Sophia replied calmly, cutting him off. Yoseph hated her in that moment. He hated that he still had to go on pretending, that he couldn’t fall down at Grant’s side, run his hands over his face, make sure he was alright. He had to sit there, at that tiny desk, toying fretfully with the glass vials, waiting to see if their heroin expert survived this little sale’s pitch.

He flexed his hands, wanting to hurt Sophia, wanting to grab his gun and threaten her, to tell her that if Grant died, then so would she. Screw the consequences. If he wasn’t such a cautious man by nature, he would have already gone for his weapon. His panic was telling him that Grant was dying, that he needed help, that this woman had  _ murdered _ him, though he knew in his rational mind that there was still time to save Grant, that he needed to stay calm.

The bodyguard smacked the junkie’s cheek one more time and suddenly he was sitting up under his own power, looking around him, lost… small. He looked new somehow, twitchy and just-born. His mouth worked, though no words came out. 

His eyes went to Yoseph and the boss had to drop his gaze down to the vial in his hand, hiding his relief from all of them, feigning indifference, though his hands shook as they moved the white powder inside the glass. When he’d gotten himself under control, he let his gaze flick back up to Grant, who was waiting to meet his eyes with eyebrows raised, his forehead wrinkled in surprise. 

“It’s like the first time,” Grant said, awe in his voice. He took a shuddering breath and then began laughing quietly, his fingers going reverently to the patch over his arm. “Oh my god,” he breathed softly, the thin dreadlocks that had escaped their tie swinging in his face as he chuckled to himself. His face looked like it was about to split from happiness, both old and young at the same time.

  
Yoseph turned to Sophia, dragging his eyes from the sight of Grant, smiling for the first time in months - happy and hurting and dying faster than he should because of what he was doing to himself, because of what Yoseph was asking him to do - and asked, “How much can I order?”


End file.
